Viewing entries tagged
Writing Program
Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera visited UC Santa Barbara in in an interdisciplinary event in which he highlighted poetry's power to honor ancestors by sharing their stories with others. He shared poems on social issues such as police violence and immigration.
Writing Program professor Victoria Houser draws upon her teaching experiences to create an inclusive learning environment that engages students of diverse backgrounds. Houser prioritizes class discussions and encourages students to set clear goals for their writing. In a recent interview, she spoke about strategies to support multilingual students.
UCSB alumna Alexandra Goldberg turned her passion for journalism into a career in broadcast news. From reporting at UCSB to working at WHAS11, an ABC-affiliated TV station in Louisville, Kentucky, Goldberg believes her time at UCSB helped her develop key journalism skills. Now, she shares how her college experience shaped her path to the professional newsroom.
University of Washington humanities scholar Kathleen Woodward shared the literary connections she has made between both aging and the Anthropocene last week at a Key Passages talk held by UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
UCSB English student and actor-turned-director Curran Seth made his directorial debut with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, collaborating with the UCSB Music Department and Shrunken Heads Production Company to bring the dark, character-driven story to life. Emphasizing emotional depth over technical precision, Seth guided his cast—many of whom were primarily singers—to tap into their characters' psychology, resulting in a raw and immersive production.
Shane Book, a poet and filmmaker, spoke at An Evening of Film and Poetry with Shane Book last week. Co-sponsored by the College of Creative Studies, Film and Media Studies, and the Center for Black Studies Research, Book spoke about his poetry books, his two short films, and his time spent learning and living in a myriad of different cities.
Sociologist Claudio E. Benzecry explores the blurred boundaries between humans and objects, revealing how people project themselves onto their surroundings and, in turn, become shaped by them. Through studies on opera lovers, shoe models, and museum guards, he uncovers the ways in which passion and perception transform inanimate things into active participants in human experience.
Meena Ki Kahani (Stories of Meena), a beloved animated series created by UNICEF in 1993, has become a cultural phenomenon in South Asia, addressing critical issues like gender inequality, child labor, and trafficking. Speaking at a UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities event, Indian scholar Jawa Jha highlighted the series’ profound societal impact. Jha believes the series shows how media can inspire social change.
As both an accomplished poet and a Continuing Lecturer in UC Santa Barbara’s Writing Program, Robert Krut balances his career passions, finding inspiration in both his teaching and creative pursuits. He says his work with students is a source of motivation which fuels his enthusiasm for writing, which he explains in a conversational Q & A.
This fall, UC Santa Barbara's MultiCultural Center hosted Echoes of Empowerment, a student-led art exhibit showcasing creative work such as poems, collages, and paintings. The pieces in this collection convey resilience, hope, and the transformative power of art to mend and uplift the human spirit, a space for connection and inspiration for students of color and others who feel marginalized.
UCSB Film and Media Studies professor Mona Damluji recently discussed her journey into children's literature and the inspiration behind her socially-conscious works. Damluji published her debut children’s book, Together, in 2021, emphasizing the power of collective action. Her upcoming book, I Want You to Know, dives deeper into personal and political narratives. Written as a poem for her children, the book reflects on the generational effects of war, particularly in the Middle East, and explores themes of displacement and resilience. Damluji aims to open dialogue about complex histories, colonialism, and intergenerational trauma.
In a lecture last week, English professor Sowon Park spoke about how human writing is born from creativity and a need to make sense of the world, whereas AI-based writing can only be formed from a prompt and cannot pull from real emotion. Park explored the notion of AI replacing human writing through her own experience as a judge in the UCSB Mellichamp Initiative’s AI and Human Writing Competition.
Writing program faculty member Patricia Fancher has published a book titled “Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetorics, and Desire in the History of Computing,” which explores the role of relationships, sexuality and gender in the computing community during its early years of invention, specifically surrounding Alan Turing. Her work was supported in 2023 by the Bazerman Fellowship, given to a Writing Program lecturer, which offered her the opportunity to edit her manuscript. In an interview, she discusses her process and challenges that came up.
UC Santa Barbara Philosophy alum Noe Padilla ‘20 was recently awarded three first-place prizes from the Indiana Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for reporting for the Lafayette Journal & Courier. Now a reporter with the Indianapolis Star, Padilla got his start in journalism writing for student newspaper The Bottom Line, eventually and pursing the journalism track in the Writing Program.
Twenty students in the 2024 Raab Writing Fellowship program presented their final projects at a showcase last week, displaying multimedia works from books and zines to videos games and interactive websites — including research, fiction and creative nonfiction. Topics ranged from jazz, to AI to incarcerated women, and an Athenian prostitute. The program is generously funded by Santa Barbara writer Diana Raab, a former UCSB Foundation Trustee. It is administered by the UCSB Writing Program.
In an interview, UCSB Writing Program faculty member Craig Cotich discusses his new course, "Writing for Change." Cotich designed the course to teach strategies to help students overcome resistance to change with a curriculum that encourages creativity. Cotich's teaching style incorporates storytelling and hand-drawn illustrations to engage students. The course, open to upper-division students, aims to improve writing skills and prepare students to manage both personal and societal change.
This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight the work of creative students across the UCSB campus. The following story won third place in the prose category.
This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight the work of creative students across the UCSB campus. The following story won first place in the prose category.
This spring, UC Santa Barbara’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted an annual contest to highlight creative student voices across the campus. The following are the winning submissions in the Photography category.
An award ceremony and luncheon was held at UC Santa Barbara’s Mosher Alumni House last week to honor the recipients of the Give Day 2024 Student Creativity Contest, sponsored by the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts. HFA dean Daina Ramey Berry joined students, faculty, staff, alumni and donors to celebrate. Winning entries will run in the coming days on the HFA website.
